Gone
by kanedbydemons
Summary: Far in the future the Empire has risen and taken over everything. One last Jedi travels to the Academy in hope of finding aid. This is what she finds. Updated.
1. 1

She wandered, wraithlike, through the collapsed and dank remains of what had once been a glorious Academy for the Jedi. Around her the old stone crumbled, torn apart by weather and cruel war, now inhabited only by the long cold shades and shadows of what once was. The entire moon was now desolate, the one remaining sentient life form alone in her desolate wanderings, trapped in an unending cycle of painful rot. Everything was rotting: the once proud foliage around the old building collapsing into a murky swamp; while her once proud ideals were quickly absorbed by that same deep and inextricably lonely quagmire.

She had gone to Yavin Four for hope and even aid, desperate in her need for the mental strength of what once was if she was to continue her life and her battle. But no more did such things as hope reside in those ancient halls – only loss, fear and eternal destruction. The lone wanderer, often seeming no more than yet another phantom in the long dead building, drew her thick black cloak around her like a shroud as she gazed out of what once was a window, eyes seeing years of decay but mind registering nothing at all. She was alone, with nobody to turn to – nobody to save her if she were to just let herself slip into the silent bliss of insanity and then follow the cold call of death in this world of decay.

She almost thought that she could hear them calling her name as she stood there. _Karaa…_ Their voices rang softly in the halls, muffled in the confused and fear-darkened recesses of her once valiant mind, but she flung them away. They were gone, dead, unable to help her now. Nobody could help her now.

Once they had stood together, brave and proud: Karaa with Seera and Devrin, the last three Jedi who stood alone against the gnawing, biting, and growing threat of the Empire. Together they had freed wretched slaves, killed cruel oppressors, and freed innocent prisoners. But it was an unending task: for every slave freed, two more were taken; for every oppressor killed, two more appeared. Battle after bloody battle the three appeared to aid what was right, coming and going in the shadows of the grim darkness that the Universe had fallen into, like three faceless wraiths. Nobody knew them and they knew and remembered nobody in the failing days.

Then there was the last battle. Three of the seemingly endless supply of Sith had come against them. Seera had been killed but had taken one with her; Devrin had killed the second; and the third had killed Devrin before Karaa could finish it off. And that left Karaa alone.

All the rumors had told her that the once powerful Jedi were gone, dead, killed by the Sith or made a part of the Dark Side of the Force. She had never believed it before: to her, the Jedi were strong; living and whole in their home here on the moon Yavin Four as they prepared for battle. But now it became apparent that she had always been so wrong and that they were truly gone. All her hopeful delusions of aid and final safety were shattered by this lonely swamp with made up all that remained of the Universe's past salvation.

She felt betrayed – scared – alone. Here she couldn't bear to reach for the Force that lay smoldering within her: the shades of long-dead Jedi so much greater than herself seemed to stay her mind. In turmoil and confused she walked slowly outside again, steps slow and thoughtful as she relished the feel of the warm sun trying to lift her failing spirits with the golden light. But she was already beyond return. The hard life of fighting and sudden loss of the only people she had truly loved had driven her beyond the point of no return and she stayed her steps at the outside of the once proud Academy for one last look at what should have been her salvation. Finally her steps took her on a wandering path into the gloom of the gnarled and decomposing trees.

That night she lay down to sleep for the last time, never again rising.

The Jedi were gone.


	2. 2

_((Okies, Skywalker05: you wanted to know more, here it is. I have been planning this for a while but it was hard work to get it to sound right which is why it took so long to write it, so sorry for the wait. I know it was a bad point to stop._

_Any comments and suggestions would be greatly received since this is my first fic – ignore the rubbishness.  
_

_Oh and I forgot the disclaimers last time so they stand for the last chapter and this one too: I own nothing. Nada. Wish I did.))_

As she wandered into the trees, carefully avoiding slipping into the swamp and murk that made up the remains of Yavin 4, Karaa kept her mind blank. It wasn't hard: she was numb, alone without hope or fear any more. She could feel nothing but detached calm since her friends were killed and now her only hope of salvation had been dashed. It was an easy way to walk, just wandering with barely a thought in her mind other than staying out of the slow, suffocating death that falling into the swamp would give her. It didn't take long, not by her own reckoning, before she reached an almost dry patch of ground about six feet in diameter, centred by a gnarled tree that lifted the mud above the water table. There she sat, curling into a ball against the knotted roots, wishing she could cry and release the grief that gnawed at her mind even though she could no longer distinguish it from any other emotion. Instead her mind wandered, taking her to the past which had led her to such a position of loss and failed dreams.

For around two centuries after the time of Luke Skywalker the Jedi Academy had risen in strength and prestige, quickly aiding the Senators and world rulers in clearing the galaxy of filth and danger and bringing it into a new, clean age of peace and happiness. With the end of the Empire many people had been left homeless and grieving but during the two centuries afterwards the wounds healed and people found themselves new ways of lives in far distant settings to the past gloom and fear of the war. Fear was lessened and fell quickly leaving behind only trusting people and easy pickings for the Bounty Hunters and troublemakers: the Jedi saw to it that the dangerous ones were stopped and that the innocent were allowed to live in peace. It was a glorious age.

But all good things come to their downfall in the end. A weak man came to the ruling of the Jedi Academy and the peacekeepers of the galaxy fell into slothful ways since they were not required to do so much. The traditions began to be forgotten and it took less than a century of weaker and weaker leaders for the Jedi to fall out of strength and favour. Three centuries after the time of the infamous Luke Skywalker a band of Jedi realised the trouble that they were in. Those eight people attempted to call the Jedi to return to the strength and power that they once had had – but it was useless since the others did not want the work that such a change would bring. This caused internal strife among the inhabitants of the Academy forcing it to concern itself even less about the outside world and more about what was going on among them.

When eventually a man chose to become Emperor once more, the Jedi were his first port of call. With a secret army of people recruited by force and bribery he stormed the Academy and quickly killed the few who stood up to him: the eight who had called for the return of strength to the Jedi. The others had become so weak that it was simple work for him to turn the others to the Dark Side of the Force leaving him with an army of Sith behind him. Leaving behind the corpses of the true Jedi and many of his own warriors – some strength at least had remained in the Jedi – he turned to Coruscant and began a war with the many other worlds.

In the time of peace in which the galaxy had been in there was only a very minimal army, none of whom had seen real action in battle, and so with the remainder of his army and his new Sith warriors he found it an easy task to begin his takeover. Planets and moons fell to his dominion, his army and power rising with each battle in which he placed himself, and his Empire grew. The worlds were soon full of Sith who were placed there to ensure that the Empire indeed had control and the evil warriors quickly found themselves the object of great deals of fear due to their cruel and vicious ways of dealing with any rebels.

Eventually the Emperor grew old. In that time there had been many rebel attacks, each put down with cruel and painful ways of death for the perpetrators and especially the leaders. The Empire became full of fear and mistrust, the money and power quickly flowing to the Emperor and the people struggling to carve a living on the meagre remains of what they could grow and build. It was a harsh life: water was polluted, food sources destroyed, people lived out on the streets or in hovels once designed for animals. When another man challenged the Emperor for control of the Empire things merely became worse: during the fighting that went on in the Imperial palaces the people in the outside world were given no aid at all and it became a downwards spiral.

It was into a failing, destroyed world full of fighting and starvation that Karaa and her friends were born. They banded together as a crude form of safety from the dangers that were all around them, learning quickly how to protect themselves. That was the usual way of life for anyone in the galaxy: fight and steal to provide enough to stay alive. Karaa's grandmother gave the children an old book before she died: it was from that book that they learnt about Jedi and how to use the Force. Together they became another pocket of resistance against the Emperor until the fateful day on which Seera and Devrin had been killed.

Floating back from her musings on the past to her surroundings Karaa gazed blindly at the trees around her. She saw little, lost in her despair against the galaxy that she lived in – although she had never called it home. Soft rustlings from the area around didn't register with her as she let herself drift off to a nightmare-filled sleep, waking often only to roll over and fall back into a glazed stupor.


	3. 3

It was getting dark when Karaa really awoke. Her sleep in the slow gloom had been rough and filled by nightmares of red light and glowing eyes, often leaving her writhing in imagined pain. Eventually she found herself returning to the world of the living, mind blurred by her nap as a sorrowful groan escaped her lips at the futility of the situation. Everything was gone, life was pointless and there could be no hope left in the galaxy. Then, all of a sudden, all her senses became alert. Her eyes snapped open, nostrils flared, mind stretched for the tell-tale mental stench of the Dark Side as she bolted upright – to find herself face-to-face with a powerfully built twi'lek with a golden brown skin and a long scar above one eye.

"Wakey wakey." He sounded amused at something even as he stood up from his cross legged position opposite her, with the gnarled tree between them. Karaa reached reflexively for her lightsaber, mind immediately clear as a bell and eyes locked on the stranger. Nobody could trust another in these days of the cruel and dangerous Empire, and this figure was a stranger who had appeared from nowhere. She was angry with herself for letting herself fall asleep like that – she could have been killed before she woke. "Easy." He held up a hand in the traditional gesture for peace but for too long had she been unable to trust people's attempts at such friendliness. For too many times had she been attacked by people who had first pretended peace.

"Who are you?" Her voice was little more than a croak, hoarse and emotionless. Her grief was suddenly forgotten in her wariness at her own situation.

"Name's Rik." He watched her, an unnervingly calm expression on his face as he surveyed the thin, scarred young Jedi in front of him. "Boss says you're on our side, wants to meet you."

"Who's this 'Boss'? And what side?"

"Boss's Katja, she's in charge. An' our side's the one against the Empire – but with the people most important to us and not getting money out of it."

"How can I believe that?" Her face broke into a feral snarl, expecting an attack from him at any moment. He just watched her with that same meditative expression, as though he was seeing straight through her.

"You're a Jedi, so Boss says. Why not reach out just over there – you'll find her, or she'll find you." He waved a big hand over further into the dismal mire through a patch of muddy ground that seemed firmer than more. Karaa closed her eyes, fearful at shutting out the no-doubt dangerous stranger but unable to think of any other answer to her situation. She drew on the Force as it lay smouldering inside her and threw it out like a net – and found something. Another consciousness, full of the Force but without the stench of decay and pain that the Dark Side bore. Indeed this consciousness seemed closer to that of a Jedi: although it didn't have the overpowering and burning light of goodness it seemed to radiate loyalty, strength, control – tempered with loss and wariness.

_/Greetings, Karaa of the Jedi/_ It was a soft voice travelling through the Force, calm and silky but with a cold, cautious edge as it crossed the gap between them. Karaa didn't know what to do or say: she was muddled, confused, seemingly paralysed by the fear of the unknown that coursed through her. _/Trust Rik, my friend, because we need your help./_ With that the other consciousness withdrew and left Karaa to decide what to do. She instinctively found herself trusting this other being but she didn't know why – could she truly believe her own instincts after everything that had happened?

"I guess I must…" She realised that she was back to herself and had spoken out loud. Glancing across at the twi'lek she was not surprised to see that he still had that calm meditative expression on his features. "I will go with you."

He said nothing, just nodded and stretch easily, showing a level of muscle that showed a life of hard labour and the scars around his wrist that indicated that he had been a slave. At the same time he seemed to have been eating well – an unusual state of affairs for a slave or indeed anyone other than the heights of society. Karaa knew that she was thin, too thin, but in the state of poverty to which the Empire had driven the whole galaxy she had never expected more. It was in silence that she followed Rik, the mysterious golden skinned stranger, through the dull murk of the swamp. Before her was darkness laden with whispers, behind her the fallen academy was swallowed up by the poisonous teeth of the swamp. Figures moved in the Force, out of physical sight but inside mental reach, and Karaa was heading for them.


	4. 4

_Sorry, forgot all this last time. I do not own anything to do with Star Wars – sadly – but the characters I'm using are all my own. The ships and species have been found off the Star Wars website. Thank you for reviewing – it's good that people like!_

_R and R please people!_

After almost ten minutes of walking through the quickly increasing gloom, Karaa felt the Force signatures of four other beings very nearby. She was already mentally cursing herself for her foolishness in believing the voice and following Rik but knew that there was nothing she could do: she was lost, in the middle of a swamp, and if she took just one step wrong she could be sucked down into a slow suffocating death.

"Here." Rik led her off the course that they had been following and through a screening curtain of slimy branches. Karaa found herself on the lip of a shallow bowl, the bottom made up of stagnant water. A strange, crab shaped structure stood on metal legs above the swamp, it's bulbous body draped with branches torn from the swamp itself as camouflage against discovery. There were doors and windows thrown open to reveal shadowed corridors inside, and attached to half of the long, articulated legs were what looked like two Z-95 Headhunter ships and an X-Wing starfighter. After a moment of mute amazement – what was that thing and who had built it? – Karaa's eyes were dragged to the beings around the structure.

A tiny, meter tall jawa, cowelled and invisible beneath the hood of the homespun robes, was leaning over the exposed engine of one of the Z-95s, waving a hydrospanner in the air as he poked around inside the outdated yet still sleek machine's internals. A massively built crawdaunt in his normal skin was sitting on the upper joint of one leg, a pile of weapons next to him as he looked them over, adjusting and fixing them one by one. A wookiee, dark grey fur brindled with black, was leaning over a small fire made on the edge of the bowl above the water in a space showing evidence of being a gathering point – she was cooking some kind of meal which smelt wonderful. But Karaa forgot them all momentarily when she saw the aquamarine squib standing on the tope of the crab, her sleek fur soft and mud-free as she looked down with a hydrospanner in her paw. Their eyes met and Karaa felt the Force between them: it was an explosive test that blasted through her, causing her to stumble backwards as it hunted for the Dark Side.

_/Welcome./_ The voice was in her mind even while Karaa pulled herself back together, gasping from the force of the test. Her brain felt as though it had been torn apart and rebuilt – then the pain abruptly disappeared and she realised that she was clutching at her head. She dropped her hands and watched the squib drop down in a few energetic jumps until she was on the ground with a hand signal to send the now watching beings back to work as she approached Karaa, a slight smile on her muzzle although her eyes were still wary.

"Greetings again, Karaa. I apologise about the test but I couldn't run the risk of you being on the Dark Side."

"Who are you?" Karaa's voice was dry: she didn't trust these people but at the same time she knew that they were not on the Dark Side. She didn't know what to think, everything that she knew was getting turned upside down and she was feeling totally out of her element.

"My name is Katja." The squib was still smiling gently. "I lead this band, to which I hope you will be added." She took Karaa by the elbow, waved Rik off to help the wookiee, and led the Jedi towards the crab structure. "This is our home, known as Base. You can see Pendra the wookiee by the fire, our weapons master Carl who is of course a crawdaunt, and our technical expert Mojo the jawa. You already know Rik and that I am Katja. Together we are known as traders of goods needed around the galaxy. In reality though we have slightly different aims. We intend to unite those people wishing for the end of the Empire and the return of the golden days. We have been waiting for you for some time."

"Why me?"

"Because you are a Jedi." Katja seemed surprised at the question. "You are not on the Dark Side, and in fact have killed Sith yourself."

"Not without my friends – I couldn't do it alone." She was going to say more but her throat closed up around a grief-built constriction. It still hurt a lot what had happened to her friends. Katja seemed to understand that: her piercing eyes softened and she spoke in an even more gentle voice.

"I would never ask you to stand alone, Karaa." She guided the Jedi to a space of the joint closest to what seemed to be the main entrance to the Base. Karaa followed obediently, unsure of what to do but instinctively believing this soft spoken squib. Sitting there above the swamp in the now complete darkness, the Jedi and the squib watched the fire together as Katja spoke quietly of her dream from the future.

"I have long wanted to see a future in which the Empire is overthrown and the Republic returned. Because of this I hunted out like minds: not rebels, because they are hot headed and such recklessness can get innocent people killed. No, I wanted people with sense, who could see what could be done and what could find ways of managing it. I came to find you because I believe you are one such like mind: wanting the end of the war, not the start of a new one."

"I just don't know if I can trust anyone any more." Karaa barely spoke above a whisper in the darkness.

"I'll tell you that you can trust us, but that won't help you believe it. Only time will promote true trust. But will you try?"

"I-" She stopped, and then started again. "I don't believe that you are evil: I felt the light side in you before. I will try to trust you all."

"Thank you."

They fell into a comfortable silence, the dismal decay of the world around them fading into insignificance. Karaa felt companionship radiating from the form beside her and for the first time in many years she felt at ease. Watching the flickering glow of the firelight beneath them and seeing the shapes of wookiee, jawa, crawdaunt and twi'lek around it she let herself relax, believing that she was among friends again for the first time since she lost Seera and Devrin.


End file.
